Cowriting poetry and academia: an email exchange

hope all is well. I’m about midway through writing something for one of the Royal Geographical Society’s journals, ‘Area’. They take relatively short pieces (~5000 words) and I was putting something together based on the poetic transect. I’ve written the theoretical set up thus far and am about to start talking about what we did and what we found out. I was hoping I might be able to use your newly minted poem responding to the Cardiff Bay stuff as part of the analysis section of the paper – the idea being that you’d be named as the co-author of the article when it finally appears.

I can send you what I’ve got so far, though it’s a bit rough around the edges and I don’t think I’ve explained the theory as clearly as I need to.

Here tis so far. Just read it back, dear god it’s dense stuff. Just to give you some context, the normal way I’d have to do an academic article would be:

• Introduction (what’s the problem, what’s the answer – neither of which I’ve really written into the intro yet)
• Theory (what’s the intellectual lineage underpinning your argument)
• Method (why did you do what you did)
• Case study (what you did)
• Analysis (why what you did tells us something interesting)
• Conclusion (the introduction again, but in more forthright tones)

So I’ve done most of the intro, theory and method sections, though they still need work and I need to write in some more stuff about arts-based methods. Thereafter it’s the case study/analysis that are the more fun and interesting bits. So far it’s at about 3000 of the 5000 word-limit, which is about right.

“Ellis et al. (2013) suggest that affective atmospheres are a means of unveilling the ‘less-than-conscious’ ” …..love that…much provoking stuff in their fine fettler….and in my own untrained opine v v well written…am just about to look up affect and see if much of what I intuitively am interpreting what I’ve read thus far chimes with what I find….but yeah love it…

“has argued that affective atmospheres disturb neat divisions between acting subjects and passive objects….” now this almost drowned me…almost I think I kinda 66% get it and 66 not so love to expound on this sometime

Okay, so there’s us, walking, breathing, thinking people. We are ‘subjects’ in that we can actively take control of a situation based on decisions that we make.

Then there’s stuff, things, which we can describe as ‘objects’. A building, a pen, a landscape. They don’t actively take control of things, they have stuff done to them by acting subjects.

The thing is, there’s not a neat division between these two things. People can be treated as objects (e.g. objectifying women by treating them purely through their sexual value to men), things can ‘act’ to change how the world works (e.g. the stuff-like qualities of walls and bars in a prison makes people behave in certain ways, so the prison can be said to ‘act’ to change the behaviour of prisoners).

Taking the example in the paper of the sports stadium. Yes, people are the ones doing the shouting when a goal is scored, so they are the subjects. But at the same time, they’re only shouting because they’re in a situation which is stimulating them to behave in a certain way. And part of ‘creating a situation’ where that happens (which we can call the ‘conditions of possibility’) is the physical architecture of the stadium, the presence of other people, the actions of the players on the pitch, the rules of the game that govern the behaviour of the players, the presence of alcohol, testosterone etc. etc. etc. Some of those things can be called ‘objects’ (the alcohol, the stadium building, the grass of the pitch, the ball), some can be called ‘subjects’ (the fans, the players, the people controlling the music in the stadium, the security people), but in truth there’s a blurry relationship between objects and subjects because it’s about how they all come together in that particular moment.

So this is where atmosphere comes in. It’s the idea that when you get these gatherings of objects and subjects, there’s something that operates between them, to bring together the people, the place, the event, the music, the booze etc. to generate something shared. So you then get grown men and women screaming their lungs out when a goal is scored without that necessarily being the conscious choice of an acting subject – you cheer because the atmosphere demands it. Did the stadium make you do it? Was it the other fans? Was it the music? Was it the goal? The atmosphere makes the idea of acting subject and passive object much more blurry.

Not in the least dude…first thanks for taking the time…next it resonates with understandings from shall we say spiritual realms….I wont start waffling coz it not clear at the mo where what you have eloquaintly outlined is striking a chord with me…when it does shall mail you.

Matter Minerals have fixed consciousness due to the relatively slow rate of vybration…..these rates are too slow for any type of self consciousness…

Plants are unique in that they display atributes of both fixed and mobile consciousness and some degree of self consciousness is present in some More sophisticated Plants – the more a thing vybrates the higher degree of both organisation and consciousness it can afford –

An example of the Plant paradigms mobile consciousness is thier ability to to spread seeds.

Animals consciousness is tottaly mobile however their levels of sophistication – capacity of actions; organisation and level of comprehension – lower than human not as a consequence of the rate of vibration of the sub atomic particles that constitute their body; Animal form can reach and in cases surpass the level of sophistication present in humans, rather the level of consciousness and comprehension is a result of rate of vibration of the Soul.

The Soul does not exist it is real…..what is unreal neva is, what is real neva is not.

Something that is real has is and will always be. And this is not bad description of the Soul. The Soul has neva been born and therefore cannot die. Things that are born, made or created are of this relative finite paradigm; which is but one of many.

All matter is subject to the laws of cause and effect and relativity. The Soul from its perspective – level of conscious comprehension – is not. From the perspective of the body the Souls encompass and the brain and mind that defines, projects, reflects thoughts and feelings based on its own internal self image, its appears that the Soul is Subject to the laws of relativity however this is misunderstanding the purpose of existence. Exsitence a paradigm of infinite relative possibility created by creAtion that it might experience in sense terms what it already knew itself to be. All of it Alpha Omega Akara Ukara Makara AuM. Not just all of the matter that was produced and is ever expanding and evolving consciousness through form. Also the consciouness itself, the Soul, the spirit, the ideations, the ideation and the just is beingnesss that constitites reality. All of it is real, any part of it is relatively real. As can and will exist for a predetermined sequence of moments and thrn will cease to be because it was: and never can be real. Their is from outside of this paradigms perspective where all is quantifyable measurable only only one Soul, however this souls unimaginable level of sophisticaton due to its beyond light speed rate of imdulatin afgords it the capability to create what is nest described as an illusion; the illusion of separate souls. This is not howevet delusion or the soul being duped by some darth vader type scenarion, rather an expression of the Souls deft artistry that it might in a sense divide and diversify itself in order to experience what it already – and has always and will always – know known knew. The purpose of the realm of relativity.

So from essence stepping down to spirit Souls appearance of Souls, Mind, Energy, information; in formatio, light gases, matter, the rate of viberstion descends in order to accomodate differing types of forms that all of it might experience all that it is as each part, parcel and particle is.

So at some level all these bits pf matter some level of consciousness; they have to that ultimately is all matters primary, fundamental comstitituate part – consciousness.

So in terms of affect and effect matter has lessening degrees of ability tp cause an affect that in turn eggects other things and or beings, due solely – Souly – to its rate of vibration.

So yes I concurr with that stuff coz in a sense all that matter made into chairs, stadium computers has been made to do that stuff, consciously though matter itself is not conscious of this